The I Ching or Book of Changes (138 page)

1
. In China, monogamy is formally the rule, and every man has but one official wife. This marriage, which is less the concern of the two participants than of their families, is contracted with strict observance of forms. But the husband retains the right also to indulge his more personal inclinations. Indeed, it is the most gracious duty of a good wife to be helpful to him in this respect. In this way the relationship that develops becomes a beautiful and open one, and the girl who enters the family at the husband’s wish subordinates herself modestly to the wife as a younger sister. Of course it is a most difficult and delicate matter, requiring tact on the part of all concerned. But under favorable circumstances this represents the solution of a problem for which European culture has failed to find an answer. Needless to say, the ideal set for woman in China is achieved no oftener than is the European ideal.

1
. [Literally, “perseverance.”]

1
. [Literally, in the German, “He dissolves himself from his group.”]

1
. [See
here
.]

1
. [Wu Ting reigned from 1324 to 1266 B.C.]

1
. [See
here
.]

2
. Note how this situation differs from that in the first line of the preceding hexagram.

1
. [See
bk. III
, under the individual hexagrams.]

2
. James Legge stresses the opinion that a real understanding of the
I Ching
becomes possible only when the commentary material is separated from the text (
The Sacred Books of the East
, XVI:
The Yi King
, 2nd edn., Oxford, 1899). Accordingly he carefully separates the ancient commentaries from the text, and then supplies with it the commentaries of the Sung period [A.D. 960-1279]. Legge does not say why he holds the Sung period to be more closely related to the original text than Confucius [551-479 B.C.]. What he does is to follow with meticulous literalness the edition called
Chou I Che Chung
, belonging to the K’ang Hsi period [1662-1722], which I also have used. The rendering is very inferior to Legge’s other translations. For example, he does not take the trouble to translate the names of the hexagrams—a task of course not easy but by so much the more necessary. In other respects also, definite misconceptions occur.

3
. [Bks.
I
,
III
, under the individual hexagrams: passages entitled “The Image.”]

4
. [See
here
, n. 22.]

5
. [This section of the commentary appears in
bk. III
apportioned to the respective hexagrams under the heading
b
in the passages entitled “The Lines.”]

6
. [See below,
here
, and also
bk. III
, where passages are repeated as “Appended Judgments.”]

7
. [Famous historian known in China as the “father of history.” Born about 145 B.C., died 86 B.C.]

8
. [The full title is
Hsi Tz’u Chuan
, Commentary on the Appended Judgments.]

9
. [Chu Hsi (A.D. 1130-1200) was the author of commentaries on most of the Chinese classics. His interpretations remained the generally accepted standard until the middle of the seventeenth century.]

10
. [
T’uan Chuan
: First Wing, Second Wing.]

11
. This commentary moreover places the origin of the Book of Changes in “middle antiquity.” This term belongs to an arrangement of historical periods according to which the epoch of the Spring and Autumn Annals [
Ch’un Ch’iu
, a chronological list of events that occurred in the state of Lu between 722 and 481 B.C., edited by Confucius], which closes with Confucius, is called “later antiquity.” It is obvious that this arrangement of periods could not have been utilized by Confucius himself.

12
. [
bk. III
, under hexagrams
1
and
2
.]

13
. [See below,
here
.]

14
. [
bk. III
, under the individual hexagrams.]

15
. [
bk. III
, under the individual hexagrams.]

1
. [Eighth Wing.]

2
. [In the sense of humane feeling.]

3
. [See
here
, n. 22.]

4
. [I.e., the
Ta Chuan
or
Hsi Tz’u Chuan
, given as the Great Treatise or
Great Commentary
here
.]

1
. [Literally, “Before-the-World Sequence.”]

1
. These passages represent variants on the text of the
I Ching
, in which the Creative is symbolized by the dragon, the Receptive by the mare, and the Clinging by the cow.

2
. In the text of the
I Ching
, the color of the Receptive is yellow, and its animal is the mare.

3
. [That is, pierced with holes.]

1
. [Fifth Wing, Sixth Wing. Passages of this commentary are to be found repeated in
bk. III
, as “Appended Judgments.”]

2
. [
Umwandeln, verwandeln
: later on in his explanation Wilhelm defines
umwandeln
as meaning, in this connection, recurrent change, and
verwandeln
as meaning change in which there is no return to the starting point. The words “cyclic” and “sequent” are therefore introduced here in anticipation of these definitions, as the types of change alluded to would not otherwise be intelligible.]

3
. Here the principles of the Creative and the Receptive, and the Greek principles of
logos
and
eros
, are in close approximation.

1
. It is to be noted that the designations yang and yin, later so much used, are not the terms chosen here. This is an indication of the antiquity of the text.

1
. [Cf. Wilhelm and Jung,
The Secret of the Golden Flower
(1962 edn.), p. 14.]

1
. Tao (
SINN
) is something that sets in motion and maintains the interplay of these forces. As this something means only a direction, invisible and in no way material, the Chinese chose for it the borrowed word tao, meaning “way,” “course,” which is also nothing in itself, yet serves to regulate all movements. For a discussion of the translation of the word tao, see the introduction to my translation of Lao-tse. [See
here
, n. 13.]

2
. This shows again to what extent the point of view of the Book of Changes is based on the principles of the organic world, in which there is no entropy.

3
. This is probably the passage on which Mencius based his doctrine that man’s nature is good.

4
. Cf. R. Wilhelm,
Chinesische Lebensweisheit
(Darmstadt, 1922), pp. 16 ff.

1
. [See
here
, n. 16.]

2
. [Seventh Wing: Commentary on the Words of the Text.]

1
. [“The Great Plan.” See bk. IV of the
Shu Ching
, as translated by Legge (
The Sacred Books of the East
, III:
The Shu King
, Oxford, 1879).]

2
. The Chinese year is in essential agreement with the Metonic year. [Meton, an Athenian astronomer of the fifth century B.C., used the phases of the moon as the basis of his calculations.]

1
. [A.D. 1130–1200.]

2
. The way in which the Book of Changes works can best be compared to an electrical circuit reaching into all situations. The circuit only affords the potentiality of lighting; it does not give light. But when contact with a definite situation is established through the questioner, the “current” is activated, and the given situation is illumined. Although this analogy is not used in any of the commentaries, it serves to explain in a few words the entire meaning of the text.

1
. [Like Fu Hsi, one of the legendary rulers of China. He is credited with having founded the first dynasty of China, the Hsia dynasty, said to have lasted from 2205 to 1766 B.C.]

2
. This seems to refer to a train of thought the traces of which are scattered through
chapter VIII
and the present chapter. The problem is whether, in view of the inadequacy of our means of understanding, a contact transcending the limits of time is possible—whether a later epoch is ever able to understand an earlier one. On the basis of the Book of Changes, the answer is in the affirmative. True enough, speech and writing are imperfect transmitters of thought, but by means of the images—we would say “ideas”—and the stimuli contained in them, a spiritual force is set in motion whose action transcends the limits of time. And when it comes upon the right man, one who has inner relationship with this tao, it can forthwith be taken up by him and awakened anew to life. This is the concept of the supranatural connection between the elect of all the ages.

1
. The reading “kindness” instead of “men” is contradicted by the context.

1
. [Many of the citations from the
Great Commentary
appearing in
bk. III
under the heading “Appended Judgments” are from this chapter.]

2
. [Same as Fu Hsi.]

3
. [Written in the Han period by Pan Ku (A.D. 32–92).]

4
. [
Shih Ching
, an anthology of poems said to have been arranged by Confucius. The latest of the poems belong to the year 585 B.C.; the oldest are earlier by many centuries.]

5
. [Shên Nung, who is said to have taught the people agriculture.]

6
. [For explanation of nuclear trigrams, see
here
.]